When i go into a subway/Tube/Metro or shopping center cafe resturant the AWB no longer works and images become red blue or what ever color the, present lighting is.

Why cant Nikon Sony Canon add a true AWB???Im sure they will say they cant make a "true" AWB but the system could be vastly improved,that info images or travel memories would not have a red or whatever cast.

The alternative is to try one of the alternatives only to find "night"setting works better than "indoor" at the moment i click through the options to see what looks best.

"Set" or "Custom" AWB has never worked for me and by the time i think its set,ive move on to another lighting enviroment

Using a program such as Lightroom is not difficulty, you start to even forget they are RAW files. In the Military Public Affairs they are VERY strict on how much an image can be edited, plus with my boss, I don't get a lot of time either (is it on Facebook yet? Is it on Facebook yet? Is it on Facebook yet? )

If you have no desire to do any other editing, you run the import (that does take a few minutes) look through the photos check your White Balance (you can run a quick sync to change them all once you have one done) select the photos to export and select export (once you've setup you export options once they will stick) and run it (and yes this does take a few minutes to run here) That's it. You don't have to think of them as RAW files.

On the D7000 I think the AWB is good. You manually can set each white balance mode in either of 4 directions from standard. From a suggestion from Maxjj I tried different WB e.g. sunny shade etc. on an overcast day at the beach.

The AWB beat the the others, sunny, shade and the like hands down for a natural looking reproduction of the shot. I will only try setting the white balance indoors.

It costs $650 less than photoshop Photoshop must be renewed every year so once bought i think id have to pay about $200 a year to keep it running.Id still have to read the instructions???

You don't need a full copy of Photoshop to get the Adobe Camera RAW editor it comes with products such as Elements and Lightroom.

As with most things hardware or software the more you use a feature the less you will need the manual. If you did not read the manual you would not know all of the features of your Sony NEX, so using the built in help feature of some software should not be a problem.

Photoshop does not require any upgrading. You can use the version you buy infinitely, even if they come out with 10 new versions. Upgrading is optional, for those who feel they'll get something out of a newer version or who just love to have the newest of something. Just FYI.

You also might consider a good alternative to Photoshop, such as Corel's Paint Shop Pro - the Photo X5 version runs around $50 and has the nearly same functionality and tools as the full Photoshop versions...it can even use the same plugins. It has an easy beginner's interface option, as well as a more advanced interface option once you know your way around.

RAW vs JPG is an endless debate, that will never have a final answer...if you like shooting JPG, or don't want to shoot RAW, that's perfectly OK - JPGs can be edited quite extensively too to make them better. The best and easiest tool to use for correcting white balance after the fact for a JPG is the 'color balance' tool in Photoshop/Paint Shop/etc...within this tool you can find a little eye-dropper - it lets you sample any part of the photo that should be rendered as white or grey, and will automatically remove any color cast and set the balance. RAW is of course the better overall tool for making edits, because it maintains much more information having not been compressed or processed yet...but JPGs can still be corrected a fair amount for quick and easy edits and cleanups. The dropper tool for color balance is a cinch.

As for auto white balance being more accurate...there are some tips that can help there too. When shooting in AWB, and at night or low light where there are artificial lights or color cast...try half pressing the shutter to focus and meter...and wait a few seconds before pressing the shutter. This will allow the camera to analyze the white balance of the scene and adjust it better. When you switch to various light sources that produce a harsh cast, the camera can't correct for it immediately, and if you just start shooting without first letting the AWB have a chance to analyze and attempt to set itself, you end up with bad white balance. Of course, some light is so harshly cast, that it just can't be corrected, which is where those WB presets come in handy. You can pretty quickly switch to 'fluorescent' or 'incandescent' or 'tungsten' settings as you enter those lighting conditions, and get a pretty quick and mostly accurate white balance - it takes no more than a second or two to change the WB settings (on your NEX, which doesn't have a direct WB button on the body, simply assign it to one of your 'custom' buttons so you can access it quickly with one touch).

:D assigned AWB button and discovered "set" which seems to set the WB?I tried before and got into a mess now it seems to set the WB for the image.

Exactly - 'set' is to manually set the white balance off the scene at hand. It's usually best to use the set button while trying to fill the entire screen with something white or grey - that way, the camera can determine what color cast the scene has and set it for a true neutral grey.

Quote:

In the past i set WB and couldnt reset it Perhaps it was the C3 i was thinking of and assumed the 5N AWB was the same?

I would have thought all the NEX cameras are the same as the NEX-5N, but couldn't say for sure. But you should always be able to manually set the WB to various presets or manually set, and reset it all you want.

Quote:

Now im going to try RAW but i cant ADD effects,i have to use them on the 5N then REMOVE them with RAW? For example posterisation.

Right - the effects can't be added to a RAW file, so you'd need to use the software you have to add various effects after the fact. Many actually prefer to use software later on to add effects, since it allows you to maintain the original file untouched, and also generate the version with whatever effects you want. You can even do that by shooting normal JPGs, and just use photoshop or any other program to add various types of effects to the shot. On the NEX, the effects won't even apply - you won't even be allowed to shoot them at all. It will just take a normal RAW shot, which you'll need to process. Effects like posterization won't even let you set them in RAW.

The NEX cameras have a significant number of features that can only be used in JPG, so keep those in mind - there may be times that it's advantageous to use JPG rather than RAW (such as in-camera HDR stacking, in-camera 6-frame noise reduction stacking, and various special effects you may want to play with for fun).